The long history of the Fairport Fish Hatchery near Muscatine, Iowa, starts with the normalization of mass-produced clothing. Member of the Friends of Fairport Fish Hatchery Jim Elias says the freshwater mussels were a great source of buttons to fasten fabric.
"The Fairport Fish Hatchery was established as the United States Federal Biological Station in 1908 by an act of Congress," Elias said in a phone interview with WVIK on August 28th. "At that time in our history, the pearl button industry was really one of the driving forces in the United States economy. There were something like 19 billion buttons a year being cut and finished and distributed in Muscatine back in those days."
The federal government designation of the site led to research that was hoping to sustain the freshwater mussel population.
The Federal Biological Station bred mussels using fish.
"The freshwater mussels use a host fish in their hatching cycle. The fertilized egg called glochidia gets stuck into the gills of these host fish and they live there for a few weeks until they're old enough and big enough to live in the gravel in the bottom of the river," Elias said.
The research ended in the 1930s when the Great Depression affected the station's funding, and the research lagged. The site would soon see a new purpose when, in the 1940s, the government housed German prisoners of war in the old laboratories.
"And when the war was over and those prisoners were released, they went back to Germany and some of them actually even returned to Muscatine and raised their families and lived here until they retired, working at the Heinz plant," Elias said.
The federal government would release control of the site in the 1950s, allowing the state of Iowa, specifically its Department of Natural Resources, to step in and continue the fish hatchery.
The Fairport Fish Hatchery Education Pavilion is not the only location offering educational panels for visitors, but the two trails within the 60-acre site.
Elias says the north trail showcases the former locations of cottages that housed the workers in the early 20th century, the first lab and the pumphouse. The south trail follows along the Mississippi River, showing off more fish hatchery operations.
The new education pavilion will be a smaller replica of the former pumphouse, using reclaimed sandstone window sills, headers and other materials from the original buildings.
"Its design is reminiscent of the pump house. Right. The original pump house that was built on the site that really was the lifeblood of the entire facility," Elias said. "It pumped water up the hill to the water tank and the cisterns that then gave water to the cottages as well as filled up the main fish reservoirs as well."
As mentioned, the fish hatchery is still in operation and is led by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. According to Elias, the department is working with the nuclear facility in Cordova, which Jeremiah Haas directs. The tiny mussels from the facility are moved to the hatchery and raised in a mussel bed within the Mississippi River.
"And the reason freshwater mussels are so important for our ecosystems is freshwater mussels are nature's purifiers," Elias said. "They can clean, like, 15 gallons of dirty water in 10 minutes or something like that, it's an incredibly fascinating process... it's important to have clean water. We've kind of made a mess of things."
When completed in late September or early October, the pavilion, like the trails, will be free to the public.
